Towards the end of our lecture on graphic scores, we were given the task of coming up with a graphic score and then getting into groups to improvise around it. Everyone in the class drew a graphic score and then the four strongest scores were chosen for us to improvise around. Unfortunately I don’t have access to the pictures of the scores – I drew a picture of the boat I live on surrounded by the buildings it was moored next to at the time. Admittedly this wasn’t very good as I am not the best visual artist (hence why I am studying sound art!), so naturally it didn’t get picked.

The score that my group ended up improvising around was a drawing by my classmate James of a sort of dystopian cityscape with many layers to it. In a way this was quite easy, as one of us could improvise a part as the buildings, one as the sky, one as the road and one as all of the subterranean aspects of the city. As my strongest instrument is the bass guitar, I decided to use this instrument to represent the underground lines, sewers and everything else that lies beneath a city. As we didn’t have much time to discuss what our plans were before playing the score, it was pretty much an improvisational piece. I have improvised more traditional, structured forms of music in an ensemble many times before, however this experience was different as we were more focused on creating a soundscape.

Here is an excerpt of the result:

As you can hear, it is quite messy and clunky and I think none of us were entirely sure of what we were doing. It’s actually a lot more difficult to improvise a soundscape as you don’t have music theory to fall back on like you would in a more conventional musical scenario. I was trying to keep a low rumbling tone on the bass to keep the piece grounded as it felt like it would be useful to have one underlying aspect that ties the piece together. If I were to do this again I think I would bring my fretless bass and my pedalboard to add effects to what I am doing. I would also have made more of an effort to keep eye contact with other members of the group so we could communicate better, as I feel this was lacking.

Overall, I do realise that this was a 1st attempt and everyone has to start from somewhere! I’m happy to have done it once so that if I revisit it, I will have more of an idea on how to set off. Everyone in the class was non-judgmental and that certainly helped as well – it was good to have a free, open space to experiment in.